Aman Baunthiyal; Jon-Olaf Krisponeit; Marco Schowalter; Thorsten Mehrtens; Alexander Karg; Andreas Rosenauer; Martin Eickhoff; Jens Falta

Applied Physics Letters (2023), 123, 213504

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0170354

In the last few years, there has been significant interest in gallium oxide devices for resistive switching technologies due to its remarkable sensitivity to oxygen. In this study, we present the growth and resistive switching of a (⁠ 2¯01) oriented (75 ± 3) nm β-Ga₂O₃ thin film on a Ru/Al₂O₃substrate using magnetron radio frequency sputtering. The observed resistive switching was attributed to the formation and rupture of conductive filaments constituted by oxygen vacancies in the β-Ga₂O₃ film as confirmed by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. The electrical conduction was found to be of Ohmic nature in the low-resistance ON state, while the high-resistance OFF state was governed by the Poole–Frenkel transport mechanism. Exhibiting stable endurance cycles, long retention times, and ON/OFF ratios of up to 10⁴, the devices can be considered as promising prototypes for future nonvolatile resistive switching random access memory with respect to both switching performance and device stability